


magnum opus

by basedchad



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan
Genre: ... - Freeform, College AU, F/M, ITS JUST GENERALLY OUT OF CHARACTER, M/M, Pining, a little out of character, alex is a weeb., danganronpa is mentioned, magnus is actually a horror literature/movie freak in this and also a premed, no beta we die like valhalla warriors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27870330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basedchad/pseuds/basedchad
Summary: magnum opusnouna large and important work of art, music, or literature, especially one regarded as the most important work of an artist or writer.or, where alex is lacking inspiration and it strikes her in the form of a tired pre-med student
Relationships: Magnus Chase/Alex Fierro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	magnum opus

**Author's Note:**

> haha hey fierrochasers. wrote this real quick at 4am last night theyre both kinda ooc though...enjoy a free meal!

Alex Fierro is burnt out. 

When she walks through the campus of Boston Uni for her  _ what was it again? _

_ Right. Painting class.  _

She really can’t feel anything but dread. When she woke up, she couldn’t even prepare her cup of coffee that usually energized her. 

_ This degree is so fucking useless.  _ It was her sister, Samirah, who had initially encouraged her to pursue a higher arts education.  _ You should apply your talent!  _ She said.  _ It’ll be fun! You’ll make lots of new friends!  _ She said. In Alex’s head, Sam was a fucking liar. Alex hadn’t made one friend since she entered Boston University, unless the boy she worked with for a graphic design project counted.

Simply put: Alex had existential dread. Her degree is useless and no one would appreciate her art anyway, because so far, while her teachers praised her, no one seemed to see the inherent life she would put into each of her works.  _ Hell,  _ her best opportunity was for a highly known billionaire to invest in every piece of work, and maybe then she could stop living paycheck to paycheck and off of… furry porn commissions.  _ This is what her life’s come to. It’s all over now. Maybe she should just lay on the ground for a long, long time, and let the soil slowly consume her until her body is one with the earth. _

When Alex blinks again, she’s already in her classroom, and the professor is listing off the coursework for the next month. Since the final semester is coming to a close, they will have to paint a Magnum Opus, a grand masterpiece, a work of art that contains a piece of one’s own soul. 

Alex already knows she can’t do it. She can feel the disappointment oozing from the teacher when she doesn’t turn in anything, or when she turns in something subpar, fueled by sleepless nights and Starbucks Strawberry Frapuccino with extra sugar. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Sam asks when the siblings finally reunite, sharing a meal at Olive Garden.  _ Godly fucking breadsticks,  _ Alex thinks as she shoves the second loaf of bread into her mouth like her life depends on it. 

“Why the hell would I not be okay.”  _ Boom. Third loaf of bread.  _

“I don’t know, the semester’s ending soon. What will you do in summer? Anything planned?”

“Not really. I got my final work in painting assigned today. My magnum opus”

Sam seems to do a double take. “Magnus opus?”

“No. Different letters. Is Magnus even a fucking word?”

“Yeah. I just...my friend is named that.”

“Why would anyone befriend someone named Magnus?”

“He’s actually a nice guy...just very busy. A pre-med, actually!”

Alex laughs.  _ Of course Sam crowds with all of the little nerds at Harvard University.  _ “Awww no way! Who would’ve guessed the aerospace engineer and the pre-med would be friends! What, you guys go around Harvard campus and go to the library to actually study?”

Her sister frowns. “He doesn’t go to Harvard, Alex. He’s also in Boston University.”

“That’s not fucking fair, how come you get all the friends I could make? You don’t even go here!”

“I know him through my friends from Harvard. I don’t know if you guys would like each other, though”

“Why not?”

“He’s very quiet sometimes, and always busy. You’re…” Sam makes a motion with her hands. 

“I’m not a mind reader”.

“Sorry. It’s just a funny concept. A STEM major and an arts major. Like…”

“Yeah. It’s probably best I don’t meet your friends. I despise STEM majors with everything that’s in me” Alex says.  _ That’s not a lie. And it has nothing to do with the fact that they make Alex feel dumb for not understanding stoichiometry or whatever.  _

“Not all of them are in STEM though. Only Magnus. Halfborn is in anthropology and TJ is in polisci. I’ve told you about them before, haven’t I?”

“Yeah.” She bangs her head to the table. When she looks up again, she catches a glimpse of a waiter, who she waves over. They’re in disbelief when Alex asks for even more breadsticks. 

“What’s with you and not actually eating anything besides the bread?” Sam asks, side eyeing Alex’s half eaten chicken marsala.

“Are you kidding. Everything in this restaurant sucks except for the bread!”

“What’s wrong with you? The alfredo pasta is so good.”

_ What’s wrong with me?  _ Alex thinks, opening the door to her apartment, after the meal with her sister.

_ What’s wrong with me?  _ When she takes off her clothes and enters the shower.

_ What’s wrong with me?  _ When she lays naked on her bed, covered only by a towel, staring at the ceiling. 

And when she goes to bed, her own lack of creativity torments her. 

  
  


The alarm sounds at 5 am, and 5 am means coffee time, and coffee time means  _ college _ , and college means  _ work.  _ When did her pastime turn into a dreadful event? When did her love for art change into a thorn? 

This time, Alex’s body functions automatically. Wake up. Choose outfit (she chooses a green sweatshirt and carpenter black jeans, she isn’t even trying anymore). Head to the closest Starbucks. Maybe stop at the library and look for something to plagiarize, a source of inspiration from the classical arts.

Alex hates the classical arts. She’s stooped low enough to search for artistry in them.

It’s 6 am when she reaches the Starbucks.

6 am when she decides to change her order. “Can I get the uhhh..”  _ Something warm, for a change?  _ “Can I get a Caramel Macchiato?”

The barista writes down her name and order, and sure enough, a few minutes later she’s out of the establishment with a hot drink in hand. She takes a sip. “I hate warm things. What the fucking hell was I thinking.”

She leaves her drink on a table nearby, hoping to make a warm-drink loving stranger’s day. Actually, scratch that,  _ warm drink lovers don’t even deserve rights.  _

At 6:30am, she goes into the library, the Mugar Memorial Library, a name she detests. To her, it sounds like it rhymes with cougar. There’s not much activity early in the morning in the library: she can spot 2, maybe 3 people from where she’s standing in the entrance. She travels the place swiftly, looking for the art book that will get her through the final semester before summer, when she might actually decompose into the earth.

It doesn’t sound half bad.

The library is divided well: alphabetically, and with official academic resources near the back of it. Unluckily for Alex, those said academic resources are just what she might need. With a roll of her eyes, she heads to it, and she’s close enough, until her foot bumps into something. 

_ A fucking human body. What the hell?  _

It rises like something out of a zombie movie, if zombies were blonde, looked sleep deprived, but somehow  _ beautifully attractive.  _

“Oh my god. Sorry, I was blocking your path...I probably fell asleep. Um, sorry”

A red color tints the stranger’s cheeks, and Alex finds herself wanting to see that forever and ever. In Greek Mythology, the muses ruled over the arts and sciences, providing inspiration to the mortals. And Alex thinks that in that moment, she must’ve stumbled upon the personification of one. 

“Whatever.” Is all she says. “Just don’t get in the way. I’m trying to work here, buddy”

“I know, sorry.”

“Stop apologizing to me. Move.”

Said person moves, and they don’t say anything else.  _ Why didn’t they say anything else?  _

_ Maybe because I was a bit rude.  _

Alex sneakily takes a few pictures of the archives she thinks might help, and gets ready to leave the library. 

And then she sees them again, just outside the building, taking a  _ Monster Energy  _ from the vending machine. The stranger opens it, and then pours…  _ coffee  _ on it, mixing caffeine and the sugar from the energy drink.  _ What the fuck? Are they gonna fucking drink that? _

As the thought crosses her mind, the stranger indeed drinks all of it. They even shake the bottle some more, trying to get a few extra drops of the deadly concoction into their system. And after that, they start running, and Alex can’t even stop to question what just happened.  _ I pray for their digestive system,  _ she thinks quietly.

But this occurrence didn’t change Alex’s opinion on the blonde, rather, it makes her want to meet them more, want to _know_ them, and encase their full beauty in her final work. It would save her grade, and maybe get her a friend. 

It’s 5pm and she’s done with all her lectures when she sees them again. 

They seem to remember her too, by the way they’re blatantly staring at them.  _ Good to know she’s worth remembering. _

“Huh. It’s you, from the morning. I can’t believe you survived whatever you drank after waking up.” she says. It’s a simple conversation starter.

“You saw that?” they ask. “I had an 8am class after that. I wouldn’t have made it otherwise”

“You hungry?” Alex asks, and she hopes her voice didn’t sound shaky, because her hands definitely were.

“Yeah. Couldn’t catch breakfast.”

“Let me treat you to something.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. My apology for waking sleeping beauty up back in the library.”  _ Sleeping Beauty. Why Why Why. _

“Oh. I barely remembered that, but it’s nice to finally have lunch”

“Mmkay. Alex, she/her at the moment, until I state otherwise.”

“Oh...um...Magnus, he/him?”

Together, they head out.  _ Magnus.  _ That’s a pretty name. Sounds familiar.

They sit down at...god, Olive Garden  _ again. She can never escape that hellhole.  _ Magnus orders a salad, and Alex orders Fettuccine Alfredo, per Sam’s past recommendation. 

“Thanks for treating me again. I was seriously so hungry.”

“Dude, what do you even study that makes you forget to eat?”

“Biochemistry major. I’m a pre-med. I also minor in Biomedical sciences and research.”

_ Magnus. Pre-med.  _ The pieces start clicking together in the big puzzle that is Alex’s life. She goes silent, not knowing what to say.  _ That’s Alex’s fucking friend. A STEM major. _

Magnus breaks the silence. “Um. What do you study?”

“Arts.” A simple and short response.

“Oh, I love art. I’m just not that good at it.”

“No one really is, anyways.”

Silence again.

This time, Alex asks the question. “Do you know Samirah Al-Abbas, per chance?”

Magnus raises his eyebrows.  _ Cute.  _ “Yeah, actually. We’re friends. We meet up at her family’s restaurant on weekends to eat together. Do  _ you  _ know her?”

“We’re half siblings, actually. Have the same parent.”

“No way. That’s cool”

“I guess.”

They eat together, and the silence is comfortable, and Sam didn’t lie when she said the alfredo pasta was good. Alex might have seconds. They’re out of the Olive Garden,  _ finally,  _ and Magnus is just about to say goodbye when it all comes crashing down, words spewing out of Alex’s mouth involuntarily.

“Can you model for me?”

Magnus blinks once, twice, thrice.  _ Is thrice a word? And God, he isn’t fucking saying anything. _

“Answer me. Can you model for my final painting project?”

“Um. I haven’t done modeling. Can’t you find someone else?”

“It has to be you. You don’t need to have any experience, I just need to look at your face in certain angles and put them into my painting.”

“When will that be?”

“Weekends, in my studio.”

She can see his cheeks redden again. She smirks. “I can explain the concept I’m going for when we meet up. Your number?”

“Ah, right.” He gives her his number, and sends a text to save it. 

“Mmkay, I’ll text you the addy on saturday”.

And then he leaves, and she’s alone, but she’s  _ happy.  _ And she finally has an idea, and she wants to pour her soul into the canvas. 

  
  
  


Saturday morning, and Alex takes out his acrylics, his pencils, and dusts off an old canvas he found lying around. He happens to find random things the most fun things in life. Magnus arrives half an hour later, with messy hair, eyebags, and a turtleneck. And it’s beautiful and perfect.

Alex wants to paint Magnus in the context of religious imagery: he’s never been a religious person, but he does think Magnus is divine. And it’s not love at first sight, just the pleasing form of the other man’s face. 

He would never say that out loud, though. He explains the concept to Magnus, except when he’s about to call him divine, he says he wants to represent an everyday ordinary person in religious context. Magnus seems to like the idea. Alex guides his face and his posture in order to start his sketch.

Five minutes in, the blonde opens his mouth. “Can I talk?”

Alex nods.

“Okay. Can you put on music or something?”

Alex smiles, and nods again, connecting his phone into the aux cord. Seconds later,  _ Touch You _ from _ Yarichin Bitch Club  _ bursts through the speakers at frighteningly loud levers. “Oops sorry. I hate this song actually. One second.”

Next up:  _ Rolling girl,  _ from  _ Hatsune Miku.  _ Gay little vocaloid.

“Is this Miku?” Magnus asks.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” 

“Hey, um, about what you said the other day, your pronouns…”

“I’m genderfluid.” Alex raises his eyebrow. “For example, my pronouns are he/him right now. You’re welcome to leave if you have a problem”.

“No, it’s fine actually. Have you read the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto? It’s about gender oppression. I feel you would like it.”

_ The gender fucking what.  _ “Magnus. I’m not reading anything with the word Manifesto in it. I’m not a nerd.”

“It’s not even that long…! And I’m not a nerd.” He protests. It’s cute. 

“Says the fucking biochem major. Can you close your eyes a little while?” 

Alex justifies the request saying it’s simply easier to draw closed eyes rather than open, but deep down, he knows that he’s just buying a few minutes of time to stare at Magnus.  _ Consider it retaliation.  _ It’s not like Magnus hadn’t been staring at him either. 

“Can I open them now?” Magnus asks. 

Alex looks at her canvas. He hadn’t sketched anything. He looks at Magnus, then at the canvas again. “Whatever.” 

The hours pass with idle conversations and small talk: how projects are going, how the professors are, books, music, etc. Alex finds Magnus ordinary yet fascinating at the time: like a seashell in the shore, he doesn’t look like much unless you know the possibility of a precious pearl being inside is there.

It’s a weird analogy. Then again, Alex doesn’t know much about marine organisms. He finds out that Magnus enjoys the morbid aspects of literature, something he  _ definitely  _ wasn’t expecting when he first saw the blonde at the library, graceful and shy. 

“I don’t read much nowadays,” he had told him, “But when I did, I really liked  _ Salomé _ , by Oscar Wilde, um  _ The Turn of the Screw, The Tell-Tale Heart” _

“What about realistic fantasy? Gabriel García Márquez? If you enjoy old white men so much, then maybe you should read old latine men for a change! His books are good too.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of him”

He has also discovered Magnus doesn’t actually listen to music that much. When he does, it’s Green Day, or Good Charlotte, or Nirvana, which Alex finds incredibly ironic, considering the striking similarities between Kurt Cobain and Magnus. 

“My favorite Green Day song is probably Brain Stew…” the blonde said, when the topic of the conversation had shifted.

Alex smirked. “Holy shit, I like that song. Do you gec though?”

He blinked. “Do I  _ what?” _

Magnus also enjoys video games. Animal Crossing, Genshin Impact, Call of Duty, among others. The two agree to exchange Nintendo Switch codes in order to visit one another. Alex also makes a very threatening joke about forcing Magnus to play Danganronpa.  _ Surely, a horror literature addict would enjoy a mystery game? _

Before they both know it, the night is looming upon them, and they both go their separate ways. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed leave kudos or whatever!!


End file.
